


The Hippocratic Oath

by VictoriaG16



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Gen, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaG16/pseuds/VictoriaG16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard Horatio McCoy didn't keep promises very well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hippocratic Oath

**Author's Note:**

> Oath from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html (classical version because it worked better for the contrast of old/new)
> 
> This kind of works ambiguously for both TOS and AOS.

_  
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:_

* * *

"Leonard McCoy."

It was a hot, sweaty day and he was wearing this awful suit. But his father and mother and wife were beaming up at him and as he projected the words he'd comitted to memory when he was fifteen and decided he wanted to be a doctor.

He didn't stutter.

* * *

_To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art -- if they desire to learn it -- without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else._

* * *

"Good riddance."

Leonard hated his medical professor. He was stuck up and stoic. Many would (far too generously) describe him as the type of person who knew their subject so well, they were inflexible. Leonard prefered to simply think of him as a stiff bastard. As he accepted his diploma, Leonard bid his professor a silent and profane goodbye. There would never be a time when that stuffy professor could ever compare to Leonard's own father, who was warm and welcoming and everything Leonard aspired to be in a character.

It was a sick trick of fate that his professor would outlive his father by several decades.

* * *

_I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice._

* * *

"I'm so sorry."

Harm. Injustice. Harm and injustice. That's what he was supposed to keep his patients from.

But of course, the most harm and the most injustice fell upon the one that would never let Leonard sleep soundly again. He had failed his own father and had brought the inexplicable amounts of injustice and harm.

How could one live with such a burden?

The simple answer, for Leonard, was that you didn't.

* * *

_I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art._

* * *

"Let me die."

Three words Leonard would never forget. The trembling hand gripping the lapel of his coat with a sort of gravity. The scent of hospitals and medicine. The unshaved scruff that would never have existed under other circumstances. Then being roughly pushed back -- and not that the other was his superior in strength, but that he was in shock and allowed it to happen.

He eventually did it. And it was the most difficult thing he'd ever had to do.

And afterwards, he almost gave the same treatment to another -- himself.

* * *

_I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work._

* * *

"Please let me help you."

All he wanted to do was help. He'd read every text on this disease four times over and had lectured the information to the painting in his office, comitting it all to the neurons between his ears.

But his hands had been shaking and one wrong slip might have done it. Clouded with nervousness, Leonard couldn't recall if he had made a mistake. A fatal mistake.

Since that one fateful surgery, his hands had gotten steadier.

* * *

_Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves._

* * *

"I don't love you."

Jocelyn. Jocelyn. Jocelyn.

His Joc-y.

If losing his father was stabbing him, then losing Jocelyn and Joanna was twisting the knife.

Maybe their beginnings hadn't been the most moral or romantic, but they had loved each other in some confusing, complicated, spectacular way. They had screamed at each other over stupid things and serious things but they'd loved too.

And the lack thereof would hurt indefinitely.

* * *

_What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about._

* * *

"Tell nobody."

But Leonard had inadvertently revealed the entire fiasco to his mother and his wife. It was all a mistake. They'd asked and he'd given too specific of an answer. He was still very much a teenager and had to think before he spoke.

He never did learn to mind his tongue, always spitting out a sarcastic retort.

* * *

_If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot._

* * *

"I'm shit at keeping promises."

It was true. And the bigger the promise, the shittier he was.

And yet, by the definition of the most significant promise to all doctors (or so it is said to be), he should never have had fame for his medicinal practices.

But in every universe, a Leonard Horatio McCoy was noted with some accomplishment in helping those who were too sick to stand.

Maybe an ancient oath isn't the best way to measure the worth of a physician.


End file.
